Integrated circuit device and method of identifying a presence of a broken connection within an external signal path

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9176802-B2
Application number	US-201114236338-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 31, 2011
Priority date	Aug 31, 2011
Publication date	Nov 3, 2015
Grant date	Nov 3, 2015

Abstract

An integrated circuit device comprises at least one connectivity identification module. The at least one connectivity identification module is arranged to determine an initial sensed state of at least one external signal path of the integrated circuit device, cause the at least one external signal path to be pulled towards an opposing state to the initial sensed state therefor, determine a new sensed state of the at least one external signal path of the integrated circuit device, and identify a presence of a broken connection within the at least one external signal path, if the new sensed state of the at least one external signal path does not match the initial sensed state of the at least one external signal path.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. An integrated circuit device comprising:
at least one connectivity identification module; the at least one connectivity identification module being arranged to:
determine an initial sensed state of at least one external signal path of the integrated circuit device;
cause the state of the at least one external signal path to be pulled towards an opposed state relative to the initial sensed state therefor;
determine a new sensed state of the at least one external signal path of the integrated circuit device; and
identify a presence of a broken connection within the at least one external signal path, if the new sensed state of the at least one external signal path does not match the initial sensed state of the at least one external signal path.

2. The integrated circuit device of claim 1 wherein the at least one connectivity identification module is arranged to identify a presence of a broken connection within the at least one external signal path in a non-intrusive manner.

3. The integrated circuit device of claim 1 wherein the at least one connectivity identification module is arranged to determine a new sensed state of the at least one external signal path of the integrated circuit device after a known period ‘T’ from causing the at least one external signal path to be pulled towards an opposed state relative to the initial sensed state therefor.

4. The integrated circuit device of claim 3 , wherein the known period ‘T’ is identified by at least one from a group consisting of: a calculation, a measurement at an external device, a measurement at the actual device, and derived by a measurement from reference information from at least one of: a voltage value, a power value, a time value.

5. The integrated circuit device of claim 3 wherein the known period ‘T’ is greater than a period of time required to charge or discharge at least on-chip capacitances of the at least one external signal path.

6. The integrated circuit device of claim 3 wherein the known period ‘T’ is less than a period of time required to charge or discharge an aggregated capacitance comprising on-chip capacitances and at least one additional external capacitance of the at least one external signal path.

7. The integrated circuit device of claim 1 wherein the at least one connectivity identification module comprises or is operably coupled to a sensing element arranged to determine the new sensed state by way of a representation of a signal value at the external signal path including one of a group consisting of: a voltage state representation, and a power state representation.

8. The integrated circuit device of claim 1 wherein the at least one external signal path comprises at least one from a group consisting of: an input signal path; and an output signal path.

9. The integrated circuit device of claim 7 wherein the at least one connectivity identification module is further arranged to disable at least an internal driver coupled to the output signal path when causing the output signal path to be pulled towards an opposing state relative to the initial sensed state therefor.

10. The integrated circuit device of claim 1 wherein the integrated circuit device further comprises at least one pull up element selectively couplable to the at least one external signal path and arranged to pull the at least one external signal path to a first, ‘HIGH’ sensed state, and at least one pull down element selectively couplable to the at least one external signal path and arranged to pull the at least one external signal path to a second, ‘LOW’ state;
the connectivity identification module being arranged to cause the at least one external signal path to be pulled towards an opposed state relative to the initial sensed state therefor by selectively coupling the appropriate pull up or pull down element thereto.

11. The integrated circuit device of claim 1 wherein the at least one connectivity identification module is arranged to cause the at least one external signal path to be pulled towards an opposed state relative to the initial sensed state therefor in a sufficiently weak manner such that a sensed state of the at least one external signal path is only affected in absence of a driver driving the at least one external signal path.

12. The integrated circuit device of claim 10 further comprising at least one controllable switching element arranged to selectively couple the pull up or pull down elements to pull the at least one external signal path to a respective sensed state.

13. The integrated circuit device of claim 12 wherein the at least one controllable switching element is arranged to selectively couple the pull up or pull down elements to pull the at least one external signal path to a respective sensed state via at least one from a group consisting of: a configurable resistor or a configurable driver or a configurable supply.

14. The integrated circuit device of claim 12 wherein the at least one controllable switching element is arranged to selectively couple the pull up or pull down elements in response to a change in at least one environmental condition including one of a group consisting of: a change in supply voltage, a change in temperature, and a change in humidity.

15. A method of identifying a presence of a broken connection within an external signal path of an integrated circuit device, the method comprising:
determining an initial sensed state of at least one external signal path of the integrated circuit device;
causing the state of the at least one external signal path to be pulled towards an opposed state relative to the initial sensed state therefor;
determining a new sensed state of the at least one external signal path of the integrated circuit device after waiting for a known time; and
identifying a presence of a broken connection within the at least one external signal path, if the new sensed state of the at least one external signal path does not match the initial sensed state of the at least one external signal path.

16. A tangible computer program product having executable program code stored therein for identifying a presence of a broken connection within an external signal path of an integrated circuit device, the program code operable for:
determining an initial sensed state of at least one external signal path of the integrated circuit device;
causing the at least one external signal path to be pulled towards an opposed state relative to the initial state therefor;
determining a new sensed state of the at least one external signal path of the integrated circuit device for example after waiting for a known time; and
identifying a presence of a broken connection within the at least one external signal path, if the new sensed state of the at least one external signal path does not match the initial sensed state of the at least one external signal path.

Assignees

• Rohleder Michael
• Aderholz Ernst
• Braun Bernhard
• Donner Frank
• Freescale Semiconductor Inc

Inventors

• Rohleder Michael
• Aderholz Ernst
• Braun Bernhard
• Donner Frank

Classifications

• H10P74/277

  Circuits for electrically characterising or monitoring manufacturing processes, e.g. circuits in tested chips or circuits in testing wafers · CPC title

• G06F11/0751 Primary

  Error or fault detection not based on redundancy (power supply failures G06F1/30; network fault management H04L41/06) · CPC title

• H01L22/34

  Electricity · mapped topic

• G06F11/20

  using active fault-masking, e.g. by switching out faulty elements or by switching in spare elements · CPC title

• G06F11/0793

  Remedial or corrective actions (recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40) · CPC title